Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Shrinking of Treehorn

Florence Parry Heide died this weekend. The New York Times obit on her cites.... "Her best-known book, “The Shrinking of Treehorn” (1971), was about a boy whose parents paid little heed to him, even as he began getting littler and littler, unable to reach familiar shelves, watching as his clothes seemed to grow on him. Its comic, macabre plotline appealed to the artist Edward Gorey, who illustrated it and two sequels, “Treehorn’s Treasure” (1981) and “Treehorn’s Wish” (1984)." She authored tons of books for children including the classic Some Things Are Scary and my childhood favorite, You and Me.

I won't even try and do justice to this book except to quote a few lines and show a few pictures and then send you over to Curious Pages, where Lane Smith asked Ms. Heide the question about Treehorn... Florence, just what in the heck were you thinking?

Something very strange was happening to Treehorn. The first thing he noticed was that he couldn't reach the shelf in his closet that he had always been able to reach before, the one where he hid his candy bars and bubble gum.